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Abstract :

This essay summarizes a study on exploring theory, that takes 'integrated sociological paradigm' as a starting point — a paradigm with subject on the micro-macro integration in sociology — and concentrates at the ladder of 'micro-subjective' — 'the social construction of reality'. To direct the study at constructing theory or postulate, the discussion is focused at the role of architecture in social construction through the perspective of architectural sociology. The basic assumption of this study is that, consumptivism is constructed through 'new means of consumption’, in which architecture plays the important role. Besides studying about social construction of reality, consumptivism, and the 'new means of consumption', this essay also describes the concept of 'power' and 'discourse', and role of architecture in it. The final description is a synthesis that shows how architectural symbolic environment constructs the ideology of consumptivism. As the result, could be expressed a postulate as follows: "every architectural design — that containing the discourse of postmodernism — especially at common commercial buildings, would bring the visitors into dialectics situation through the processes of externalization, objectivation, and internalization, and finally guide them at consumptive behavior which then would lead them to ideology of consumptivism".